A Companion to American Gothic.

Cover -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part I: Theorizing American Gothic -- 1: The Progress of Theory and the Study of the American Gothic -- cross-references -- 2: Gothic, Theory, Dream -- cross-references -- 3: American Ruins and the Ghost Town Syndrome1 -- Introduction: American Ruins as "Different Spaces" -- The Play of Substitutions: Ghost Towns in Recent American Literature -- The Quasi-Eternity of Violence: Anasazi Ruins as the Ghost Town -- cross-references -- 4: American Monsters -- Monsters Are Other People: The American Monster as Cultural Other -- The Numinous American Monster -- Made in America: Monsters Made By Man -- Natural Monsters -- cross-references -- 5: Creation Anxiety in Gothic Metafiction: The Dark Half and Lunar Park -- cross-references -- Part II: Origins of American Gothic -- 6: The African American Slave Narrative and the Gothic -- cross-references -- 7: Indian Captivity Narratives and the Origins of American Frontier Gothic -- cross-references -- 8: Early American Gothic Drama -- Some Notable Achievements -- cross-references -- 9: Charles Brockden Brown: Godfather of the American Gothic -- cross-references -- 10: George Lippard and the Rise of the Urban Gothic -- cross-references -- Part III: Classic American Gothic and Its Legacies -- 11: New England Gothic -- Puritan Paranoia and Necromancy: A (Mainly) Male Gothic Tradition -- Something in the House: The Female Gothic Tradition in New England -- Gothic Revivals in New England -- Gothic New England Today and in the Future -- cross-references -- 12: Descendentalism and the Dark Romantics: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and the Subversion of American Transcendentalism -- Nature, Sacred and Profane -- Self-Reliant Individualism and Morbid Subjectivity -- Utopianism and Dystopianism -- cross-references.

13: "Gigantic Paradox, Too . . . Monstrous for Solution": Nightmarish Democracy and the Schoolhouse Gothic from "William Wilson" to The Secret History -- cross-references -- 14: The Fall of the House, from Poe to Percy: The Evolution of an Enduring Gothic Convention -- cross-references -- 15: Henry James's Ghosts -- cross-references -- 16: A Sisterhood of Sleuths: The Gothic Heroine, the Girl Detective, and Their Readers -- cross-references -- 17: They Are Legend: The Popular American Gothic of Ambrose Bierce and Richard Matheson -- cross-references -- Part IV: American Gothic and Race -- 18: Is There an Indigenous Gothic? -- The Native American in American Gothic -- Native American Gothic -- Indigenous Gothic -- cross-references -- 19: Gothic Transgressions: Charles W. Chesnutt, Conjure, and the Law -- Conjuring and the Law -- "The Sheriff's Children": Lynching, Law, Gothic -- cross-references -- 20: Undead Identities: Asian American Literature and the Gothic -- Shared Terrains: Asian American Literature and the (American) Gothic Tradition -- The Living Dead in Fae Myenne Ng's Bone -- Conclusion -- cross-references -- Part V: Gothic Modern and Postmodern -- 21: I Am Providence: H.P. Lovecraft -- In the New England Gothic Tradition -- Cosmic Gothicism: A Haunted Universe -- Providence in Literature and Life -- Critical Assessment and Influence: Past, Present, Future -- Conclusion -- cross-references -- 22: Awful Mystery: Flannery O'Connor as Gothic Artist -- Gothic Godliness -- Heuristic Horror and Sacramental Significance -- Monsters and Mimesis - The Enemy is Us -- Truth in articulo mortis -- The World is Not Conclusion -- cross-references -- 23: Not a Refuge Yet: Shirley Jackson's Domestic Hauntings -- "I Live in a Dank Old Place": Jackson's Retelling of the Domestic Myth -- "Never Meant to be Lived In": The Haunting of Hill House.

"No Trespassing": We Have Always Lived in the Castle -- cross-references -- 24: The Strange Case of Joyce Carol Oates -- cross-references -- 25: "Identical Boxes Spreading like Gangrene": Defining the Suburban Gothic -- cross-references -- 26: The Cold War Gothic Poetry of Sylvia Plath -- Defining Cold War Gothic -- Posthuman Gothic Landscape Poems -- Ghosts of the Holocaust and the Living Dead -- Nuclear Power and the Vampire Death-Mother -- Conclusion -- cross-references -- 27: Sexuality and the Twentieth-Century American Vampire -- cross-references -- 28: Why Stephen King Still Matters -- cross-references -- 29: The Ghost of the Counterfeit Child -- A Tale of Two Semataries -- A Child Is Being Buried -- A Child Is Being Mourned -- The American Way of Resurrection -- cross-references -- 30: Toni Morrison's Gothic: Headless Brides and Haunted Communes -- The Terrible Family -- The Beloved Community and its H(a)unted Women -- Where to Now? -- cross-references -- 31: When the Blood Trail Comes Full Circle: Cormac McCarthy's Gothic of Guilt -- cross-references -- 32: Becoming-Girl/Becoming-Fly/Becoming-Imperceptible: Gothic Posthumanism in Lynda Barry's Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel -- Becoming Cruddy in the Days of the Father -- Becoming-Fly -- Becoming-Imperceptible -- cross-references -- 33: Gothic Self-Fashioning in Gibson's Novels: Nature, Culture, Identity, Improvisation, and Cyberspace -- Monoculture and Hybridity -- Nature, Space, Counterfeit Nature, and Cyberspace -- Character, Self-Fashioning, Bio-Sculpture -- cross-references -- 34: Contemporary Women's Gothic: From Lost Souls to Twilight -- Introduction -- Socially Radical Vampire Gothic -- Lesbian Gothic -- Dysfunctional Families: Vampires and Werewolves -- Neighborhood Gothic -- Vampire Romance -- Conclusion -- cross-references -- 35: Apocalyptic Gothic -- Apocalypse Now.

Apocalypses Then -- The End of America: Two Works of Apocalyptic Gothic -- cross-references -- Part VI: Gothic in Other Media -- 36: The Darkest Nightmares Imaginable: Gothic Audio Drama from Radio to the Internet -- cross-references -- 37: Film Noir and the Gothic -- cross-references -- 38: The American Dream/The American Nightmare: American Gothic on the Small Screen -- cross-references -- 39: Digital Games and the American Gothic: Investigating Gothic Game Grammar -- Digital Games as Medium: Why We Need to Consider Form -- Adapting the American Gothic for Digital Games -- Alan Wake: losing the plot -- The Secret World: a conspiracy of signs -- Conclusion -- cross-references -- Part VII: American Gothic and World Gothic -- 40: Self-Fragmentation, Diseased Landscapes, and other Enigmatic Engagements: American Gothic and the Literatures of East and Southeast Asia -- Japanese Literature -- Chinese Literature -- Southeast Asian Literature -- Conclusion -- cross-references -- 41: Fluid Bodies: Gothic Transmutations in Carlos Fuentes' Fiction -- Transgression and Monsters -- The Uncanny Irruption of the Other -- cross-references -- 42: Let a New Gender In? American Responses to Contemporary Scandinavian Gothicism -- cross-references -- Index.